


Giving Wings Away

by cognomen



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Christmas, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-18
Updated: 2013-01-18
Packaged: 2017-11-25 22:41:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christmas alone sucked.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Giving Wings Away

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Christmas alone sucked.

Fusco wants to roll over and shove his head under his pillow, only he'd traded shifts with Kane because his ex-wife had taken Mike on a cruise for the holidays, and Lionel didn't want to feel that specific sort of pathetic. He knows it's the better option, only right now it's freezing everywhere in his apartment but right where he is under the electric blanket. 

He drags himself out of the nest of blankets and tells himself he'll make his bed his next day off, for real this time, when he sees the tangled bundle of blankets that barely looks unoccupied, and then he drags himself through the day - even Carter's got the day off, because the cops joke that working on Christmas day is the 'homeless' shift, and Fusco finds that depressingly appropriate.

He has an apartment, but it's barely a home. 

He works three issues that are barely worthy of a detective - a store break in where only cash is taken that speaks to the quiet sort of desperation that the holidays can create. An automobile accident - no reindeer involved. The last one is a domestic violence dispute, a real mess and no one wants to press charges officer the bruises aren't so bad this time, and _hey_ , he thinks miserably, as he shoves himself into his car with his knees almost in his chest and puts his head between his hands on the steering wheel - at least it hadn't been a homicide.

Fusco stops at the gas station on his way home and pays twice as much for a bottle of crappy booze than he really needs to, and he's about halfway up the stairs when he decides one of his neighbors must be cooking pasta because he can pick out the smell of hamburger he thinks, and rich tomato sauce, and it's heavenly. It smells like his house used to when his mother would cook dinner on the weekends (she worked two jobs but never on the weekends) and the whole family would gather up and sit down and pretend to be functional at least for the duration of a meal.

Considering the contents of his cupboards absently - what would least disrupt his fantasy about eating real food and most go with his bad malt liquor - he's halfway into his apartment when he realizes the smell is _stronger_ in here, like...

"Hey," he calls, and he's not sure which one of them it is, but he hopes it's Reese because every time Finch shows up here the apartment starts to feel about half as big and about twice as dirty. Usually the guy insists they meet someplace neutral, and Fusco is A-Ok with that. "That you cookin'?"

Finch leans back from the counter - and Fusco keeps his wince internal as the man's eyes settle on the paper bag in Lionel's hands. 

"Yes, Detective..." Finch says, and he smiles just faintly, with his eyes and the sides of his mouth. "I didn't mean to intrude but I didn't see that you had any plans and after the day you had..."

Which of course the guy knew all about. Fusco shrugs his shoulders like it's not the worst thing that's ever happened to him. "Hey just another day in the most wonderful time of the year," Fusco says, and he feels like he should hide his intents a little better, but instead he just yanks down two plastic tumblers from the cabinet, and pours Finch his very own cup of MD 20 20. It seems like the politest way to insist that Fusco is going to drink it anyway.

They trade peeks. Finch peers curiously down at the contents of the plastic tumbler - ice free and the bottle dared to call it 'red grape wine _flavored_ '. The other colors had been suspiciously neon and Fusco had a rule about not drinking anything blue. Lionel looks down into the pot Finch is stirring and decides that once again Finch has brought the better end of the trade. It's pasta sauce - too much for the two of them, but he had never skimped on leaving leftovers in Fusco's fridge. It's come to a point now where he thinks he's actually eaten more home cooked meals in the two months since this had started to become regular than he had in the two years prior.

"That looks great," Fusco says, glad Finch hadn't gone more traditional and cooked a whole turkey or a ham. He just wants - just wants things simple. Finch demurs, still eyeing the cup he'd had pushed toward him. He's made no move to take it.

"I hacked your mother's computer and stole the recipe from her digitized database," Finch says, so flatly that Fusco almost can't tell it's a joke at first, until he tosses back a sudden and halfway awkward look, pivoting from the line of his waist to his shoulder to do it, and it's just so - strange, that Fusco snorts into his drink and winds up with crappy bum wine stinging his nose as he coughs.

"My mother wouldn't touch a computer with a ten foot pole," he sputters. 

"No, I suppose she wouldn't," Finch allows, but he's smiling anyway, "But she was very kind to me on the phone." 

It was the sort of thing Finch would do, and it felt less and less awkward every time - and yeah, okay, Fusco knows he should have boundaries and maybe set up some borders, but no one's ever really cared enough to call his mother before and ask for her pasta recipe. Fusco has another long sip of his drink and lets it curl warm in his belly, before he fetches the biggest pot and runs cold water into it. 

"I'll make the spaghetti," he volunteers, as he's already filling it at the sink, so that Finch can't really protest - and he knows better by now than to try.

Lionel notices that when Finch finally does pick up the cup he'd been given and venture a sip, he's too polite to choke on it or spit it back out, but Finch pushes the cup away and ignores its presence for the rest of the evening. 

When they're done eating, and that's pretty normal even if Finch has laid his two-seat kitchen table out with a machine's precision, all kinds of extra forks and two glasses - one is water, one is wine of a considerably higher quality than what Fusco had expected to drink all night, the bottle doesn't even have a label - Fusco leans back, the chair groans, and he realizes.

"Hey we didn't - have plans for this did we?" Because he has the sinking suspicion he's forgotten all about it, and Finch just shakes his head - maybe too polite to suggest that they had, or maybe they genuinely hadn't. Finch wasn't a terribly good liar, so Fusco breathes a little easier. 

"No..." he trails, and then his voice quirks up a little, he's folded his hands under the edge of the table, probably held tight together in the way they got when Finch felt nervous or fidgety. "But it's been a good while since I've spent the holidays with company, and - you'll forgive the assumption - you seemed like you could use some." 

"Yeah," Fusco agrees, and he feels the smile narrowing his eyes and pulling his mouth along into an expression far less familiar than a grimace. "I guess I really coulda."

If they do something so tame and normal as settle onto his weary, creaking couch with the cushions that have given up the ghost, and cycle through the fourteen channels he actually gets until It's A Wonderful Life comes on, it's still comfortable. He digs up the only blanket that doesn't smell like it's been two weeks without a wash and it barely covers them both if they get really close - that's not so bad.

"I hate this movie," Fusco confesses, at the first commercial break, because Finch's eyes have gone away somewhere, looking out the dirty window down the hall into the smudgy darkness of the city beyond, and his hand has strayed down Fusco's side languidly, pushing circles through his old t-shirt that are just a hair shy of tickling.

"I've never seen it," Finch says, distantly, and then he seems to come back to himself, blinking owlishly. "But we can turn it off if it bothers you."

Fusco laughs - it's unreal, Finch is so unreal at times. Was there anyone in the world who really hadn't seen this movie? He guesses if it had to be anyone, it'd be Finch. "Leave it," Fusco says, and Finch's nails scratch suddenly against his skin, where the shirt's drawn up higher from all the shifting. He can't help the way his voice changes at that, because he has to draw in a breath, "It's practically a tradition."

"Is it," Finch responds, but his tone is faintly distracted, and he shifts himself just a little, changing the angle that Fusco is leaning on him - probably hurting his neck, Fusco realizes belatedly, but he hadn't said anything. Then his questing fingers slide lower, curl over Fusco's belly and down further still. "I'll try to pay attention."

Damn if Finch couldn't sound the most proper and smug while his palm was sliding right over Fusco's crotch, and okay, okay the movie was terrible but at least it gave them an excuse to touch without it having to be super awkward, without them trying to talk and ask permissions and with Fusco wondering, every time he looked at Finch (smart, rich, isolated Finch, who could have anyone - who could have Reese the Wonderboy if he wanted) what on earth Fusco had done to deserve it.

So his hands are moving before he really expects them to, and both of them are kind of okay with that, he guesses, because it's not any time at all before Finch negotiates Lionel's zipper and then they rearrange themselves on the couch so Finch can brace back against the arm and lean into the corner with his legs up. It's fluid, easy, and maybe it's the fact that both of them have had a little alcohol, maybe it's how much warmer it is under the blanket, maybe it's just that after a couple of months they're getting more used to each other.

Finch touches him like he's something special, even though his eyes are on the movie like they're half-drunk teenagers trying to pretend they aren't up to something, his fingers are careful and deliberate and explorative. There's no way to say how grateful he is for that - how grateful he is that Finch seemed to instinctively know better than to bring him anything tangible on Christmas to embarrass Fusco for not being able to do anything remotely as decent in return. There's no way to say how grateful he is for the chances he was forced to have - crazy as that is, so instead Fusco draws Finch's erection into his grip, and pulls the blanket over his head so he can swallow it down and feel Finch go momentarily taut.

He makes a noise of surprised wonderment, and that always kills Fusco a little, that Finch seems so surprised that it feels good - or maybe surprised that Fusco wants to do it at all, and with his tongue pressed flat over any hint of his teeth and his mouth stretched open, Finch's hands disentangle and descend down onto the top of his head and push a little, making a sound in his throat, a high and embarrassed sound, a sound that apologetically insists on more.

Fusco obliges enthusiastically, because if there's one thing he has a little confidence in it's that he's halfway decent at this, that he knows it's not an art of precision but instead of adapting, and he's always been pretty good at just opening wide and taking it, and with Finch pushing shallow thrusts into his fist and mouth, clawing the blanket off of Fusco's head so he can _see_ his own length sliding through Fusco's fist and disappearing into the man's mouth, it never feels as pathetic as it had all those other times. 

He lets Finch set the pace, curls his free hand into the expensive shirt at the man's hip, and then he has to choke down his own laughter, because the TV is making noises about an angel getting wings and Finch is pushing up with an urgency that suggests he might come right _now_ and christ, talk about timing having a bitch of a sense of humor, because Fusco can't laugh right now or he'll choke.

He does anyway, and it just makes him laugh harder, drawing back faster than he wanted because he has to cough into his hands or he'll make a mess, and he comes up for air still laughing and occasionally coughing while Finch stares at him with his hands raised like he's not sure if he'll have to give the heimlich, which sends Fusco into another helpless paroxysm of laughter.

"No," he says, when Finch pats him carefully on the back after he gasps in air and has to laugh it back out again, and then he gives up on trying to reassure Finch before he gets himself in check.

"Lionel are you _alright_? I'm sorry I didn't mean to-"

If ever a guy almost died from laughter, Fusco is pretty sure this could probably be the best way to test it. 

"It's not your fault," he manages, and he uses the blanket to wipe his tears, wipe his hands, and he huffs out the last remnants of laughter, only he doesn't dare look at Finch because he's going to laugh again. "Just - the TV - you didn't hear it?"

Finch shakes his head, and Fusco snorts, reaches out for Finch with his big clumsy fingers, to almost pat him reassuringly, but his hands are a _mess_ , so he just puts the blanket over him, pats that carefully, and shakes his head. "I'm happy, it's okay. I just laughed at the wrong time - that's not the worst that could happen, right?"

Finch looks bewildered, but... he's smiling anyway, and Fusco has to go wash his hands or he is going to start laughing again.

He closes himself into his tiny bathroom, and runs the water until it gets something like warm, and he grins stupidly at himself in the mirror while he washes his hands. Fusco decides that next year he's not taking the homeless shift. Christmas alone sucked.


End file.
